DNA and Violence

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New York Magazine

Above is a link to "Geneticists to Study Adam Lanza's DNA."

I'm not sure what I think of this. It would be awful if discoveries were used to marginalize people who have not committed any crime; but on the other hand, progress could be made in treating mental disorders and illnesses.

I'm wondering what others think about this.

Lebenunwerten leben ( do I wrote it right?) I think it causes only nazism , because among many people with the same characteristics only one will probably be a psicopath.

It reminds me of a story a biology lecturer related to us thirty years ago. When the relatively rare XYY chromosome combination was being studied (XX = female and XY = male) it was found those males with the extra Y chromosome were a lot more predisposed to aggressive behaviour and the proportion of prison inmates with XYY was much higher than in the general population. This lead to it being nicknamed the criminal chromosome. However, after more research was done over a few more years it was discovered that there was also a much higher than average ratio of XYY men in the armed forces and police force. The nickname "criminal chromosome" was quietly dropped.

In relation to the OP's article it may indicate a predisposition towards a certain type of behaviour but it could also negatively impact attitudes towards such people - how long before it gets labelled the "criminal gene combination" and such people become pushed outside of societal norms and possibly triggered into acting based on their genetic predisposition.

it should be used to identify people who may have a problem with violence, when there young and then to give them lots of cancelling and what ever health care they need to not be violent. think if we did this there would be little violence in society.

I think it might be better to give them counselling rather than cancel them!

In short: It is hogwash http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... -of-genes/

We can't know what to do with the information we find. And we may misunderstand it. It could be misused, like it has been in the past.


People could become frustrated and start acting as they think their expected to based on their diagnosis.


Hopefully this is what would happen, but there is still the possibility of misuse and unexpected negative consequences.

I suppose the DNA is already being studied, so we'll find out what impact this has in time. I just hope that the scientists don't jump to hasty conclusions.

The idea of a violence gene is about as ridiculous as a gay gene.

Scratch that...it's actually far more ridiculous than that and the idea of a gay gene is already pretty silly.

But cancelling them would solve the problem!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Yeah... I'm never comfortable when people start falling back into the nazi mindset.

^^^^^ Hitler called those with mental illness or differences "useless feeders".He then sent them on a train trip.

NYT Article: Gene Tied to Male Violence is Studied


Confirmed by further studies, as reported in this PDF document...

Monoamine Oxidase A Gene (MAOA) Predicts Behavioral Aggression Following Provocation



Scary, huh?

^^^^Especially the part about the hot sauce.

I stuck a hot pepper in a friend's mouth when I was a kid,bet I've got that gene.

Sane is only acceptable mental illness, as Karl Jung said, "Show me a sane man, and I will cure him."

No one lives up to their DNA, mostly they watch TV.

We have been building a felon DNA data base for years, it is stored in computers, and can be searched, and no felon pattern has shown up.

The worst thing about the worst evil, is they are just like the rest of us.

Looking for what is wrong killed the Autism DNA Project.

What do you compare it to?

Would a database of DNA culled from Doctorates, those granted a Patent, a Nobel Prize, be able to predict the future?

It seems the upside would produce more social good, and all of those things are common, compared to this being a big year for shooters, both of them.

Falling behind the rest of the world in Science and Math education is a much worse problem.

A road map of potential talents seems worth study.

Shooters are just rare. Unpredictable, and will stay that way.

A real database would include everyone, where their life performance is added in, and the children, and in a hundred years we might have something.

Currently we cannot afford it, it would be National Health Care, and we would have to borrow time on the Chinese Supercomputer to run the study.

We do not have a hundred years, as an economic, military, manufacturing, and education power, we have already slipped out of first place.

Perhaps this decline of Empire caused by misspending income on a war machine, rather than on schools, is the cause.

We cannot tax or cut our way out, the only way is to increase the economy, and we are in bad shape.

A social feeling that it is all hopeless causes many problems.

When you talk about a felon DNA database, just what do you mean by that? Because sequencing the entire strand is something rare and expensive even today. Chromosome banding is cheap but doesn't tell you much. It's really most useful for proving that DNA evidence found at the scene isn't from a suspect. Even when it looks just like the suspect, it could just mean that it's someone in their family, or in some cases someone from the same tribe. Chromosome banding was what people were talking about 30 years ago in reference to DNA evidence. It provides a coarse, blurry view of who you are.

Services like "23andme" use genotyping chips that look for specific sequences - you have to know what you're looking for before you can look for it. And these services cost a few hundred bucks when they aren't running a special deal.

Wholesale full sequencing just isn't a reality right now. Not on any meaningful scale. It's even been shown that different genotyping chips make different common errors. This technology is really just starting to grow pubes.

In another 30 years when you can get the full sequence for as many people as you like on an economical basis, it will be easier to do this kind of comparative study, but you will still have to identify genes that you want to study because the vast majority of similarities in any population won't be meaningful for a given study. It won't be interesting to know that almost all autistics have normal sized lungs, for example.

But once you identify a meaningful sequence, yes, that sequence can predict the future to some extent. Aptitudes and tendencies, and physical realities. Caffeine is metabolized at different rates by different people depending on a particular gene, so so this could predict how likely it is that a person drinks coffee that isn't decaf after dinner for example.

I wonder if one day people will be able to manipulate DNA say in utero. Parents may want to create a specific kind of person; or the state might.
Probably not in my lifetime, but it may be something future generations will consider. I wonder if it would make for a lot of happy well functioning people, or a distopian nightmare.